the black community organizations as the czar. i would like to be called the community regulator. the other things is we would like to put together a black agenda, a black debate to further discuss the organizations from the naacp to have a big summons in february at the library. i would like to talk to mr. miller or whoever is involved with that. so anyway, thank you for letting me speak now. >> thank you. i'm going to ask that you only remember we start the meeting with general public comments so you will go there next time, but your points are well-taken. thank you. >> madam secretary? >> item 8 is a consent calendar.

their considered to be routine by the commission and acted upon as a group. >> is there anyone who would like to separate an item? >> 8e. >> and 8 h. >> with respect to 8abcfg. >> it's been moved. >> any discussion. >> i guess i will call for items 8abcfg. seeing none, public comment is closed. i will call for a vote, all in favor say,

"aye". >> aye. >> 8 e. madam secretary. >> approve plans and specification in work contract. >> mr. president, my question on that goes to why we only had one bidder. i understand we did it twice. there was only one bidder the first time and only one and the same bidder the second time. i couldn't see in reading through this anything that made this work unusual. it seems like the bread and butter stuff we do, why on earth only one? >> the first time we put it out to bid there were four bidders and only one of them actually had a qualified subcontractor do a lining the sewer. the other three did not. we had to rebid it and rebid it out and only the one with the pipeline

did the bid. there was another bid but it came in late so it was not considered. >> so non-complying bids didn't decide to comply and compete? >> that's correct. however i should note that right now because of the paving program, there is a lot of sewer lines getting replaced in the city. there is a lot of work right now for a lot of people, we are getting less and less bidders bidding for our projects now. >> that's something to watch. that's a real concern if that becomes a common occurrence. >> that's why we pay for this stuff. thank you for that explanation. i will move the item. >> okay. it's been moved. 8e, is there a second. >> second. >> any further discussion. >> i will call for public comment on 8 e. all in favor

say, "aye". >> aye >> the motion carries. next item 8 h. >> too approve item 79. >> the reason i bring that up, it's not that much money is that we are collecting every month instead of every other month. it seems like quite an increase. >> this increase is because of the frequency doubling and the rate being charged here has been flat since 2009 and it would be an extension of that rate since 2009 observing the double collections and allow our new request for quote in the oncoming year. we have made great progress to doing additional website work with for our customers and look

forward to rolling that out over 2014 and are working on a campaign as well to increase online bill pay as well. so we would like to explore all of those things and with this extension it will allow us to do that in a very deliberate way. >> so this venue is still needed in china town? >> it's still needed at this time. >> my recollection was that this was originally part to be intended a citywide neighborhood city hall kind of program where there would be a presence in each neighborhood of their government. and this is the only one that remains? >> i believe that is correct. so most of the online, most of the in person payments are done at our headquarters at 525 golden gate. >> any other parts of the city that seem to need that service? >> there is a list here as far as all the payments and, let me

see, we have our 525, city hall we have dots printing and stationery and then we also do the online payments as well as mail payments. this is the only other physical location besides city hall besides the 525 golden gate. >> is this where there was a commissioner with a conflict of interest? >> i don't recall that in the last 5 years anyway. >> a little local color. >> when did you join ? >> this will be year 6, 2008. >> yes, this goes back to 1999. >> i'm new. thank you. >> i will move this >> okay. it's been moved. this

is 8 h. is there a second? >> second. >> i will call for public comment. seeing none, public comment is closed. all in favor say, "aye". >> motion passes. item 9. >> this is your water rate study. the charter requires at least 5 years independent consultant be hired to review the books and review the cost of services. that's what we've done. here today is steve mcdonalds and -- frommen

nearing. men men -- engineering if you can raise your hand. these talented individuals, if trisha can raise her hand. they are here to hear your comments firsthand. so not to put anybody on the spot, there is about 5-8 questions that will be helpful for you to weigh in as i did in policy related items to tea up things when we come to you in march, we are presenting you ideas that you care most about for our customers as well as for the stewardship of the commission. so, big picture. what has been accomplished so far is that we

have worked with koirls since last january and nearly complete the cost of work and we want to get your input there. big picture here is we'll go through objectives required by the charter, some background timeline and what the key policy drivers maybe that you would want to weigh in on and then give you a brief view of what you are going to be seeing. as part of the rate study it allocates cost in our 10-year financial plan, our budget and all of our projections and will provide for you as policy makers as well as staff comparisons of all of these data xaert to all of our neighbors in the bay area and larger cities in california. by rate structure and design and looks at those

best practices along the way to make sure that we are doing well by our rate payers and for our rate payers. the charter requirement is in back of 2002 and rate studies back in 2009 adopting the first 5-year rate package and this is a new time now because we are also looking at in the connections of this rate study, the new rate policy you adopted, the rate technology policy you adopted and the new insurance policy that you adopted. a lot has been happening. we met with several neighborhood groups and associations and we are teenage up to do up to 700 across the city and we'll be providing this information. the rate fairness board will be meeting

during the last several months and our financial planning director who is here who has done a lot of the heavy lifting there along with his staff. the cost drivers on the technical side, no surprise to you, personnel and operations and maintenance are relatively flat. they are now a small proportion of our budget but what is driving our need is capital. it's showing your 10-year financial plan and projections and you can see the portion of the budget of people is really shrinking and the portion investment in capital in the stewardship you charged us with grading the capital you can see here is coming online mainly in the form of cash funded as well as mortgage funded or debt capital improvement. that's the large department. in fact about 75

percent of the rate increase that is needed is to pay for capital investment. only about 20-25 percent is for general inflation for personnel cost and for operations and maintenance. the areas that we need your help is considerations in slide ten. the last time we did this was a 5-year rate package which was to get us through the we sip construction. we need more years to get us through. rate design as how you want average rates to look. we have already given some indication that we want no larger than single rate digit increases. also things ad

as commissioner moran noted earlier how we do that as a measure. then we'll be able to consider things like for tiers. some have three and four tiers. we have two tiers on water and sewer and that's a policy consideration and things on budgets as discounts for low impact design for green incentives. i know that's been a great consideration for a number of you on the commission. i'm looking for you for ideas that you want to see. the rate, study so far is basically summarized here on the slide over the next 5 years. you can see projected monthly increase about $78 a month to pay for the completion of we sip and even the projections shown breaking up how much is going for

operations and you can see on this slide 75 percent for the increase is for capital investment for things that last 20-30 and in some cases nearly 100 years. the 10-year view is here and here is an example. san francisco is right in the middle there and even with our proposed rate increases for next year, we'll remain right in the middle for this comparison. you will see these charts for dollars per month, you will also see them as percentage of household income and you will have a complete picture for your budget and your rate deliberations. the public outreach is a part of the assistant manager as well as fox who is here to hear your comments and we've been already reaching out to communities offering two ways of our system, allow folks to see the

aging infrastructure as well as when there are sink holes that need to be repaired and i think they overwhelmingly increase that replacement budget for 15 miles per year and like that they are coordinated amongst ourselves and increase the spot repairs for 700 from what used to be funded. that's being noted for some stewardship examples that the commission has taken. these are types of organizations that we'll be talking with over the coming month. neighborhood and labor unions and community based organizations and messaging through the current newsletter on how dollars are at work. with that, we are here to listen to you and to hear what additional things besides just

the technical cost of service but what additional rate design, policy items, water budgets, green incentives, whatever they are that you would like us to be able to be prepared to talk to you in january and february as the rate study gets completed. it is by no way complete now. it's a time now whenever your policy input would be most valuable. >> do you have a preference for what that takes? there is no action here, right? >> there is no action but the list of questions on slide 10 and 16 those are so bigger picture policy ideas and you have input on environmental incentives and after the ability. for affordability we already gave you the adoptions

in our affordability. we tighten those down. that is already in the report. if there is anything you would like, as commissioner moran as the idea for affordability for number of households in the city that exceed the 2.5 percent because our metric is on the household. >> commissioner moran? >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity. i'm not going to give you specific some concerns that i hope can be considered as part of the analysis of our rate processes. some of these are dictated by the rates policy some may require some modification to the rates policy. as far as affordability i have made my point on that.

i think it's a big issue especially as we have become a city of the very rich and very poor. that's something that average isn't relevant and we need to have better ways of measuring that. >> i would like to see you somehow able to better -- align the cost structure and the fixed structure. if you get into a drought and people start using less which is a good thing, we have to do rate increases so they end up getting, the feeling is that you are paying more to get less and factored covered the fixed cost but it feels wrong and it's a tough sell when you are trying to get people to do the right thing and somehow aligning the rate and cost structure would be to our benefit. part of that also is there is this perverse functioning of how we pay for conservation and reclamation.

the fact is that every continue evasion project that we authorize raises water rights, that's kind of an odd thing but it's absolutely true, same thing with reclamation. the more we do, the harder it is to say we want more. i'm thinking we should probably take a look at whether it makes sense to have a conservation fee that is a fixed charge and that couldn't just be conservation, but the idea is that this is a commitment that needs to be funded that over the long-term it will improve the portfolio and the metric water in the system and we know it's going to cost money and we can be honest with people upfront and say it's going to cost you money and sure how much. the nice thing also if you raise the fee you can continue to

fund project until you can't afford it anymore and by that time you don't need to. i would like us to have a look at that. the last item is one of incentives. we want to make it in people's self interest to do the right thing and not rely just on people doing the right thing out of the goodness of their heart. the only twhaun occurred to me frankly as i was thinking about that because there are some perverse incentives in the water system we are looking at lown impact development of the water system. we do take some account of how much hard escape as people opposed to landscape. we might be able to do more of that that you can measure how much hard escape a lot has, the roof, sidewalk, patios, we know

how much hard escape someone has. to convert that to basically some form of land use that will absorb water, that would reduce our cost ultimately and we can reflect that. that is one example that came to mind. hopefully there are others as well. those are money issues that i hope you can consider. >> thank you. >> commissioner vietor? >> i'm concerned about the fee conservation issue. the report of november 2012 on storm water fees and really laid out a fact forward that i thought was compelling. i think it's important to look at that. the

long range 2014-cycle as an introduction to this concept and addresses this question and i pretty much want to echo and my concern about the conservation approach and it do dove tails nicely and we start to monetizing and looking at the benefits as well as the parallel incentive program would be. i think you capture in your presentation and not much for a fee. i had another question on the infrastructure. it seems that is an opportunity especially on the water shed and roll out to do community

outreach toond really have the communication be around look your rates are going to increase, but here is the additional benefits that you will get from your rate increase and to really use that green infrastructure programming as the communication vehicle for the rates. i don't know how to really capture that but it ties in with your slides for with a the public outreach programming will be as well as the benefits of lid fee incentive structure might be. >> any other comments? >> at any time you have additional thoughts please share with me. not to put you in the spot, but i have collected comments as to rates and we are working on those

various ideas affordability and payer outreach as well. >> vice-president caen? >> have we looked at putting on another tier? >> we have looked at that and we have a tier in the previous cycle and decided to make just two tiers on water. >> most of our comparison just do on water and not for sewer and that makes us unique that way. we can consider it but most of our water consumption is because folks use water so

wisely here in san francisco, most of our usage is tier one and tier two of neighboring jurisdictions. by having two tiers water and sewer, we are doing pretty well by it. >> my thought is if you go up to tier 3 that's your fault that you are up there. it's a nice way to make more money. >> yeah. a good thought that are you in tier three because of a 5-person family. the last time we visited this issue, that third tier we heard from san francisco families and we'll look at that and extend it up to perhaps tier one for large family water budget.

>> if large family, also a large number of single family resident. >> it would be interesting to since we are reading about ought -- all this stuff that you can rent your couch now because of the affordability issues. i don't know if that plays in. it might be an interesting data point or demographic to track where there is a new definition of these extended families, if you will. where strangers are renting small spaces in houses and then all of a sudden you have 10 people living in there and a lot more users. >> i think the issue is that if you are trying to get to pro person, it's hard to police how many people are actually using the water because maybe you have a house of two people but they just use water and don't really conserve and you have

multiple families living because of the affordability issue and the way to assess our rates. i think we are looking at all the things that you are talking about and we are going to pull together a presentation of what we think to address some of these issues. the last thing i want to do is monitor how many people are in a household. >> how do other cities do it? >> some cities that are using water budgets they are actually using gif maps and googles maps and they have a water budget and if someone want to waiver a water use. there is section in the report that will highlight water budgets and monitor them without policing.

>> how does santa cruz get to be the most expensive? >> i believe they have 5 tiers with a very aggressive water structure. we'll highlight them and call them out in this report. they have very high rates. >> any other comments? commissioner torres? >> i don't see any upholding data that you are going to use. >> we are going to use neighborhood groups and business owners. >> that doesn't give you much information in my point of view. many of these community groups are concentrated if one specific area and the people that can't come to those meetings are the people we should be out reaching. maybe

some polling data. something to discuss, but there needs to be a broader view of outreach and this is taking a lot of staff time in the evening to data that may not be totally reliable. >> it's a good point and we'll definitely consider that. >> the cost of the poll versus the cost of the salaries for the employees might be far less. >> good point. any other comments, commissioners. we won't be calling for a vote. but i will call for public comment on this item. any public comments? >> seeing none. item closed. no. 10. >> approve amendment no. cs 113 b. >> i will move the item. >> it's been moved and

seconded. >> any public comment? seeing none, it's closed. commissioners, would you like for me to call for a vote or hear more on the item. >> a vote. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> motion carries. >> it's been moved and seconded. any public comment on these items? this item is closed. >> are these trails that we passed years ago? >> no these are trails by san mateo county.